Even the automobiles don't come along this way. Nearly all of them keep to the State road over on the other side of the river. There are just three houses around the Green, one on each side, and not another dwelling anywhere within half a mile. So we haven't many near neighbors. Our house stands at the head of the Green. It's a big square house, with a cupola on top and a veranda around all four sides. Father's father built it when that style of house was just beginning to be popular, and everybody thought it very grand. I hate it myself, because it seems so old-fashioned and dreary compared to those pretty new bungalows they are putting up in Bridgeton. Mother and Father and the Imp and I live here. Father does intensive farming,--he is just crazy about it,--and every one comes to Birdsey's for ideas on the subject. Dave is my brother. He's seventeen and a half, and a very quiet and thoughtful sort of person. All the same, he can do his own share of teasing in a quiet way. He left high school this year because his health wasn't very good, and is helping Father with the farming. Next year he's going to study scientific agriculture at one of the big colleges. I'm secretly awfully fond of Dave, but just at present he pretends to look down on girls as entirely unnecessary articles in the general scheme of things, so Carol and I are letting him severely alone. The Imp is my sister. She's twelve years old and a perfect nuisance. Carol and I have named her "The Imp" because she acts just like one. She likes to trot around with us all the time, but we won't have it. It's impossible to have a child of twelve continually hanging on to girls of fifteen or sixteen, and Carol and I simply won't stand it. The Imp is fearfully miffed about this and spends her time thinking up revengeful things to do to us. She makes our lives perfectly miserable sometimes, though we wouldn't let her know it for the world. Carol's house is on the River Road side of the Green. She lives there with just her mother and her Aunt Agatha. The Fayres are distant relatives of ours, so Carol and I are really cousins. Their house is one of the old style, a real New England farmhouse, and they have a glorious big barn in the back, where we've all played ever since we were babies. One little room off the haymow Carol and I have fixed up as our private den and study. We keep our books and our fancywork there, and her mother gave us an old desk where we do our school work. We always keep the den locked with a padlock, because the Imp would like to get in and rummage around. She's as mad as a hatter because she can't. She threatens to climb in the window sometime, but I don't believe she could possibly. If she did, she'd probably break her neck.